So this week, the big news was Lenovo buying Motorola from Google. And we’re still hearing a lot more about this acquisition. Lenovo agreed to buy Motorola Mobility from Google for a mere $2.91 billion, partially because Google is keeping many of their patents.
VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar, sat down with Lenovo’s President of North America, Jay Parker and asked a few questions about the Motorola acquisition. We’re not going to cover the entire interview here, just the good stuff, you can head over to VentureBeat to read the full interview.
How do you see Motorola fitting inside of Lenovo right now?
“It definitely accelerates our timeline to bring smartphones to mature markets, like Western Europe, and the US. Motorola has a very strong presence here in the US, and important brand, a historical brand. They’re number three in smartphones here. They have a great relationship with Google, which is something we’ll bring over and which will strengthen our relationship with Google.
We have this concept of PC Plus, we’re expanding our business into adjacent technology areas, and now in a very short time we’ve done that in both servers and smartphones”
Does this change Lenovo’s relationship with Google?
“Google’s an extremely important player in our ecosystem obviously… we had a very strong relationship prior to this deal. I see this doing nothing but strengthening what we have going forward and our ability to plan and develop products together.”
When will we see the first new devices from Motorola under Lenovo?
“Our plan is to bring over the brand, the trademarks, and the products that they have under development right now, including the Moto X and Moto G as well as the DROID. Exactly when that happens, and what goes beyond that depends on how successful we are and how fast we are collectively when we close this deal.”
Will anything change for the existing customers for the Moto X? Will Lenovo be providing any services to them?
“Maybe in the long-term. Right now our job is to integrate that business once the deal closes, to turn it around to profitability and ultimately once we go through that process we’ll learn what makes sense in terms of bringing Lenovo capabilities to Motorola’s side. We’re also very excited to have the technical experise, sales, marketing and distribution expertise for smartphones. We’re looking forward to bringing that in Lenovo.”
So it looks like Lenovo has some pretty big plans, and an even bigger one of becoming a player in the US. While many of us weren’t happy with Lenovo buying Motorola, they can probably do more than Google could (because Google has hardware partners to keep happy).